What makes you ask?

"What makes you ask?"

That was one of the most powerful questions I could ask on a sales call.

Most salespeople answer the question a prospect asks them. "Does your product do X?" They say yes or no and move on. "Does your product integrate with Y?" Yes or no. Move on.

That's the mistake.

Early in my time selling Perch, a prospect asked: "Does this have facial recognition?" We got this question a lot.

The easy answer is no. We didn't have it.

But "no" on its own is a problem. It sounds like a gap. It can become an objection later in the deal. And if you're selling an early-stage product that isn't fully featured yet, you can't afford to leave that kind of doubt on the table.

So instead of answering, I asked: "What makes you ask?"

Almost every time, the concern had nothing to do with facial recognition. It was about workflow. They didn't want athletes logging in manually before every set. They were worried the technology would slow the workout down and coaches wouldn't adopt it. Facial recognition was just the solution they'd imagined to a problem they hadn't fully articulated yet.

That's a completely different conversation.

Perch was built specifically to capture weight room data without adding time to the workout. Once I understood the real concern, I wasn't defending a missing feature. I was selling one of our biggest strengths.

"What makes you ask?" does two things, whether you're a founder selling your own product or a rep on the front line.

First, it turns a perceived weakness into a selling moment. A question about a feature you don't have is often not about the feature at all.

Second, it keeps you from building the wrong thing. Founders and salespeople hear a question, assume it's a feature request, and commit to the roadmap. Sometimes it is a feature request. More often it's a proxy for a workflow problem the prospect hasn't named yet. Build for the intent, not the question.

Most sales training focuses on handling objections. But a lot of objections never needed to happen. They show up because someone answered the question instead of understanding why it was asked.